Chinese policemen stand guard outside the Chengdu People's Intermediate court in Chengdu, in southwest China's Sichuan province on September 24, 2012, where Wang Lijun, an ex-police chief who triggered the Chinese Communist party's biggest scandal in years just months ahead of a sensitive leadership change waits for the verdict in his trial. Judgement will be passed on Chinese ex-police chief Wang Lijun for defection and other crimes on September 24, a court said as the scandal that brought down top politician Bo Xilai reverberated ahead of a power transfer. AFP PHOTO / Mark RALSTONMARK RALSTON/AFP/GettyImages

Wang Lijun, a former police chief who fled to a U.S. Consulate in February and told diplomats there that the wife of a senior politician had murdered a British businessman, was found guilty Monday by Chinese authorities in his corruption trial.

A court in the central city of Chengdu sentenced Wang to 15 years in prison after convicting him of defecting, abuse of power and other crimes to which he confessed at his trial last week, the government's Xinhua News Agency reported.

The punishment is lighter than the 20 years in prison sentencing guidelines suggest and reflects Wang's help in exposing the central element of one of the biggest political scandals here in a generation - the killing of businessman Neil Heywood by the wife of his former boss, Bo Xilai, a Communist Party leader.

Wang, 52, spent nearly 36 hours at the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and told diplomats that Gu Kailai, Bo's wife, had poisoned Heywood last November.

After an overnight stay, Wang left the consulate in the custody of state security officers and presumably told investigators about the murder, too. Bo was removed last March as party chief of the southwestern metropolis of Chongqing, where Wang had served as police chief, and was suspended from the Politburo a month later.

Gu was convicted last month of murder and given a death sentence with a two-year suspension, which means she is likely to get a long-term prison sentence. With the end of Wang's trial, Bo is the one remaining major figure yet to be tried. Speculation abounds over whether there will be an announcement or leaked statements concerning his fate before a once-a-decade leadership transition that the Communist Party has scheduled for this fall.

During Gu's trial, court officials said Gu killed Heywood because she believed that he was threatening her son, Bo Guagua, who graduated from a master's program at Harvard University this summer.